


Watanabe Textiles and Mercantile Company

by LectorEl



Category: Naruto
Genre: Especially when they're actually cover identities of canon characters, Family Dynamics, Gen, I am giving Ryou and Hiroki a happy ending if it kills me, Or 'why I should not get attached to other people's OCs', Ryou is disabled, but dammit, made family to some extent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-01-15 00:29:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1284448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LectorEl/pseuds/LectorEl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even in the world of shinobi, civilians are necessary, and they have their own stories.</p><p>(Or, 100demons writes about a group of merchants for a chapter and a half, and I get attached.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [100demons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/100demons/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Change Fills My Time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/687192) by [100demons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/100demons/pseuds/100demons). 



“ _See the water and the land,_  
  


_the sky opens up and sighs,_   
  


_If only, if only, I am so lonely.”_

Kenichi's voice carries over the water, accompanied by the softer echo of Ichiro's. Ryou pauses and sets aside the account book he was working. It's been a long time since he heard Kenichi singing. Not since the warehouse fire.

He runs his thumb across the burn-scars that covered his left arm absently, barely noticing the gesture. The night is warm, and the nearly-full moon washes the clearing in pale light. Like a night out of the tales Hana-san told, when kitsune might dance and the spirits of the land would put on their finery.

“ _Sailor loves the sea, farmer loves the land,_  
  


_who loves the wind-tossed sky?_   
  


_Even birds on wing must go to ground."_

Kenichi's voice sounds closer, and Ryou hastily shoves his account book back into the wagon and dives back into his bed-roll. He closes his eyes just as he can hear their footsteps.

“Kid asleep?” Ichiro asks. A shadow falls across his closed eyelids and then moves away.

“Out cold. For _once_.” Kenichi's voice fades in and out with his footsteps. Gathering twigs for the fire, Ryou supposes.

Ichiro snorts. “Like you've got room to talk, insomnia-san. When was the last time you slept through the night?”

“Who else is going to watch your unconscious behinds during the night? Or not-so-unconscious when it comes to Ryou,” Kenichi shoots back. “Which, speaking of, you've got morning shift driving the wagon. _Go to sleep_.”

“Bossy,” he grumbles, but Ryou feels Ichiro settle down next to him, a solid weight at his. Kenichi's footsteps come closer, and then there's the heavy weight of his traveling jacket dropping atop them both.

Ryou smiles, and curls one hand into the heavy fabric. He drifts off to comforting sound of Kenichi singing quietly.

“ _See the water and the land,_  
  


 _the sky opens up and sighs..._ ”

***

Some days, the burns don't bother Ryou much. Today, however, is not one of them. The ache of his left leg wakes him. He hisses in pain, levering himself up with the help of the nearby wagon.

“Kenichi, could you help?” He calls, hoping the swordsman is nearby.

“Cramping?” Kenichi's voice comes from somewhere behind him. Ryou flinches and swears in pain right after, because that hurt, goddammit.

He nods. “Leg feels like it's burning. Need to do the stretches.”

Kenichi nods and loops an arm around his waist, helping him hobble over to a clear stretch of ground, far enough from camp that he'll be out of sight but not earshot. “Do you need me to help?”

Ryou shakes his head. “I can handle it. Thanks.”

“Anytime, Ryou.” Kenichi ruffles his hair and heads back to wagon. Probably to wake Ichiro. Ryou grimaces and starts his stretches. Flex the left leg to full extension slowly, roll the ankle, contract. Move on to the next exercise.

A painful half-hour later, and Ryou can limp back into camp. Or what's left of it. The wagon's already packed up, and Ichiro is seated, sleep-eyed, on the driver's bench. He doesn't comment on Ryou's absence.

“Ready to go, brat?”

Ryou scowls. “I'm _fifteen_ , would you quit calling me that already?”

“Never.” Ichiro smirks, and Ryou feels totally justified at lobbing a chunk of stale trail rations at him. Five more days before they reach their uncle.

***

Uncle Jiro gestures at them to sit down at the low table where Aunt Hanaki is pouring tea. It takes Ryou a few careful moments to arrange himself in a position that doesn't aggravate his leg.

“Your letter said none of you were severely injured,” Uncle Jiro says, after several moments of increasingly awkward silence.

Ichiro grimaces. “That was before there was that – what was it, Ryou?”

“Hypertrophic scar tissue formation, leading to restriction of the knee joint,” Ryou recites dutifully. After the first few dozen doctors he's had to explain this to on the road, he's got the explanation down to a science. “Raised and hypersensitive scar tissue over the joint, which doesn't stretch as well as ordinary skin. The result is a restricted range of movement, which leads to pain and cramping in the associated muscles. I have trouble walking.”

Aunt Hanaki nods calmly, resting one hand on her husband's wrist. “I see. Will it improve?”

“Probably not, without better treatment than what's available locally.” Ryou shrugs at the others' looks. “I might as well be realistic.”

“We're _merchants_. We travel,” Uncle Jiro says. “If it's not available here, it may be elsewhere.”

“Do you think we didn't think of that already?” Ichiro asks irritably. “We looked.”

“But not in any of the major villages. Not without a permit or contract. There's got to be one -”

“Iwa,” Kenichi interjects. Uncle Jiro and Aunt Hanaki turn to look at him. Ichiro sighs in the background.

“Pardon?”

“If there's anyone that's likely to be able to do something about the scarring, it's in Iwa.” Kenichi crossed his arms, and Ryou suddenly remembered that the swordsman had been a mercenary before he'd signed on with Watanabe Textiles.

Uncle Jiro raises a skeptical eyebrow. “They barely have the infrastructure to support their own shinobi.”

“Exactly. Their shinobi. They have a low civilian population, so there's a higher per-capita rate of serious injury than any other hidden village. Add in to that the second shinobi war, where they faced Konoha, and their ongoing feud with Suna – burn injuries are common.” Kenichi cocks his head. “During the war, many mercenaries contracted out services to them. Word gets around.”

“Did you?” Aunt Hanaki asks, voice still as a frozen pond. She's from Kiri, and even _Ryou_ has heard of Iwa's betrayal of them.

Kenichi shakes his head. “Getting involved in shinobi wars is a poor choice for anyone. Even shinobi.” Ryou giggles a little at that.

“While I'm all for my baby brother getting something done about the scars, we'd need to get into Iwa first, and that's not exactly possible,” Ichiro said. “Hidden village, remember? Actually hidden, from what I hear, not 'gigantic city in the middle of a forest' hidden.”

“Actually -” their cousin Riku starts from outside the main room, and then curses.

Ichiro snorts. “We all knew you were there already, Riku. Just get in here and tell us already.” The screen door slides open, almost sheepishly, and Riku steps inside, perching on the high side table.

“You had something to add, Riku?” Uncle Jiro says. Riku's cheeks go a little pink.

“Yes, uh,” he fumbles at his purse, drawing out a sheaf of messily folded notes. “Don't know if you heard yet, but Iwa's looking for new suppliers. Well, Iwa, Suna, and Kiri, really. Heard it when I was picking up that order for Yukio-san.”

“Kiri?” Ichiro cocks an eyebrow up at that, snorts. “Good luck on that. You'd have to be an idiot to take up a contract with the bloody mist.”

“ _Ichiro_ ,” Uncle Jiro says quellingly.

“Out of line, yeah. Sorry, Auntie.”


	2. Enter Hiroki

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I'm writing again, after a long, long hiatus. Very short, but at least it's an update.

On the list of things Hiroki hated, Gari-sensei's information-gathering tests were number one. He never, ever did well on them. Today, he'd been set loose in the high market, near the administration complex. Hiroki normally liked high market – It had wall railings to keep people from falling off, so Iwagakure's few civilians usually sold their wares there. It was the only place in Iwa where the food stalls were any good, and Hiroki spent all his time off there.

But today Gari-sensei was testing him, and he had to get one piece of information on every civilian vendor at the market. _Without_ telling them about the test.

“Gari-sensei, you _suck_ ,” Hiroki muttered under his breath. There had to be twenty different civi venders in the east half of high market alone, and a bunch of them were the new contractors.

“Do I detect the sound of adolescent whining? Ryou, I think we found you a friend!” The one-eyed vendor grinned widely at Hiroki's scowl.

And then yelped, when a hard-back book, thrown absolutely beautifully, hits him in the back of the head.

“Ignore Nii-san, he thinks he's funny when he's _not_ ,” the book-thrower said, limping out of the shade of their tent's canopy. “I'm Watanabe Ryou, and the grinning idiot is my brother Ichirou.”

“Older siblings suck,” Hiroki agreed, and stuck out his hand. “Takahashi Hiroki. Nice to meet you, Ryou-kun.”

Ryou blushed a dull crimson, and took his hand. “Nice to meet you too. Um, are you looking for something?”

“Yeah, of course,” Hiroki lied instantly. “I needed-” he scanned the stall quickly “-sterile thread, for stitching wounds. Ran out last mission, and Gari-sensei pitched a fit.”

“We've got that, yeah,” He nodded, absently grasping a table-edge to support himself as he maneuvered around the space. It was graceful, almost, nearly shinobi like in the careless precision of _weight-transfered-here_ , tent-pole to table edge to cabinet, all unconscious calculations done while Ryou focused on other things.

Like Shion at the mission office filing fifteen different reports at once, or the way the wind swept together in the street corners, stirring up dust. A sort of elegance of motion, any simple thing done well. He'd always been fascinated by seeing it, and had never been able to explain that fascination to anybody.

“-Takahashi-san? Takahashi, I have your thread,” Ryou said, clearly repeating himself. “Is there some secret shinobi-spacing-out thing I should know about?”

Hiroki grinned sheepishly. “No, just a Hiroki-has-no-attention-span thing.”

“You give your sensei _lots_ of fits, don't you?” Ryou said, mouth twitching with a repressed smile. He leaned back against one of the nearby tables, easing the weight off his bad leg with a grimace.

“Pretty much, yeah.” Hiroki sighed. “I gotta go, more errands to run.”

Disappointment filled Ryou's body language. “Of course. Please come back again soon.”

Hiroki made a split-second decision. “Sure. I've got the morning free before training, what about you? We could hang out.”

*^*^*

“Mom, what's that jutsu you use to deal with pain again?” Hiroki asked, halfway through dinner.

His mom fixed a _look_ on him. “What did you do, Hiro?”

“Nothing! Nothing, honest! I just made a new friend, and he's got a bad leg. I wanted to show him the fountain near the main street, but I figured walking would be-” He cut off his babble at his mom's hand.

“Didn't you learn your lesson from the damn bats? Quit adopting every pathetic creature you run across, this isn't a zoo.”

“Is that a no?” Hiroki asked, ignoring the rest of what she said with the ease of long practice. His mom pinched the bridge of her nose.

“You are more trouble then the rest of your siblings combined,” she complained. “I'll show it to you. Once. After dinner.”

  
  



	3. Interlude - the Bid

⌈ **Watanabe Textiles, of the larger Watanabe Mercantile Company, submits its bid to provide Iwagakure no Sato with textiles for the proceeding five year period. The Watanabe Mercantile Company is an established business with a sixty-seven year history of operation. We have a wide network of suppliers and trade routes. As a result, we would not take on additional financial burden to expand our routes to Iwagakure, and would not have to attach additional price increases to guarantee a profit, unlike many others. We can guarantee the following textiles' availability . . .⌋**

“Do you think father's going to make it back here in time?” Ryou asked, about a month after they arrived. The kid always asked the hard questions.

“Probably not,” Ichiro admitted, sitting down next to his brother on the porch. “Unless he manages to charm some noble into buying out the caravan, he's going to need to be out there for a while. He might be able to meet up with Uncle Satoshi at the capital while they're waiting to hear who gets the bid.”

Ryou sighed. “I thought that too. I'm glad Kenichi came with us instead.”

“Mother would have beat Father over the head with his own ledgers if he tried. No way would she send us off without a guard.” Ichiro rolled his remaining eye. “Besides, he doesn't trust us alone.”

Ryou snickered. “Doesn't trust _you_ , you mean. Putting your own eye out with a pair of sheers, really.”

“I was _eleven_. And you are a horrible little brother and I'm not sharing my dango with you,” Ichiro said with a sniff, faking injured dignity.

“Is Ichiro pretending he has dignity again?” Riku asked, closing the sliding door behind him. “Because take it from me, he has none.”

Ichiro threw one of his empty dango sticks at him. It bounced off his shoulder harmlessly, and Riku's smug grin grew wider.

“Hey, Ryou. Did I ever tell you about the time Ichiro managed to knock half a caravan over?”

Immediate action was called for. Ichiro tackled his cousin.

“Help! Help! Ichiro's finally lost it!”

“I'll show you 'lost it', you jerk -”

“Is something going on out there?” Aunt Hanaki asked.

“No, auntie,” Ryou called back. “Riku and nii-san are just discussing something!”

“Uh-huh. Make sure you don't break anything in that 'discussion', boys.” Aunt Hanaki's voice was dry as the deserts of wind country.

“Yes, auntie!”

⌈ **. . . for medical needs, Watanabe Textiles can provide:**

*** hospital-grade gauze, cotton muslim, bleached**

*** hospital-grade undyed linen, suitable for bandages**

*** Sterilized silk thread, waxed, .05 mm to .8 mm in diameter . . .⌋**

“Do we still have contact with that merchant? Dad was still trying to get a reply from him last I checked,” Riku said, leaning over Ichiro's shoulder. Ichiro shoved his cousin back halfheartedly.

“Mother got confirmation of her letters being delivered just before the fire,” Ryou said, not looking up from the book he was studying. “Besides, Otsume-san is retiring soon, she'll have silk thread we can buy.”

“The fuck do you know that?” Riku asked. Ryou looked up from his book and raised his eyebrows.

“She was selling a large amount of stock at the trade-meet, and her daughter handled most of the transactions. You saw it too, Riku.” Ryou managed to imply Riku was a blind idiot without saying a thing in that direction – he was so proud of his little brother, all grown up and being an obnoxious shit.

“So? Her daughter'll just inherit, won't she?” Riku shot back. Ryou smiled cheerfully.

“Otsume-san's daughter is marrying into the Minamino family. They're spice traders, not fiber.” Ryou raised his eyebrows. “It was on the public message board, didn't you read it?”

“No, obviously. I was busy,” Riku said, leering. “Kairi-chan likes me.”

Ichiro snorted. “Likes your pocket change, maybe. You, I think she'd be okay doing without.”

  
  



End file.
